It’s been a challenging time to write. In addition to normal life, I’ve had extra stressors: the retirement, the move to North Carolina, but it has been the weather that has done me in.
First it was the 3 days without water when the ice storm in Richmond damaged something that purified the city’s entire water supply. A city without water is a stressor. It was relatively easy to buy water in neighboring towns but it was at home when everything water related required thinking through: washing dishes, washing clothes, brushing your teeth, flushing the toilet. The no-waterness becomes a constant thought, lingering behind what is trying to be the focus. My mind was ruminating on solutions but there was no take-out, laundry mats or McDonald’s bathroom because nobody had water.
Two weeks later, in my new city, there is another ice storm. They don’t have salt trucks down here because it rarely reaches 23 degrees with sleet and ice. We are stuck inside. Then the furnace goes out. As I write this it’s 57 degrees in my room with all of the space heaters running full blast. The repair truck can’t come until the roads are clear. So, I can’t go to Starbucks or Publix or the library for heat. We can’t drive anywhere.
In trying not to get sucked down into an ensuing depression of hopelessness and helplessness, I use my spiritual practices. I try being grateful- I have water, at least. I have electricity at least. I think of people who have to walk to get water or who are sleeping outside. These thoughts are not helping. I can’t get warm enough to meditate. I want to go back to bed and so I do.
Then a thought occurs to me. I think of Harriet Tubman. Here was a woman who knew about being cold and experienced types of privations that I can’t imagine. In addition to all that, she was a fugitive of a government that hated her.
Hmmmm
I just realized that there are stressors behind stressors. So, as I write wearing two sweaters and sitting under 3 comforters I’m thinking about Mother Harriet and how over 100 years later I’m in that same country…..and then the words start tumbling onto the keyboard.
After the fugitive slave law was passed Harriet Tubman wasn’t safe anywhere in the United States. It had never mattered that she was born in this country since enslaved people weren’t citizens. However, before the law she could escape to other states where she didn’t live as someone’s property. When the federal law was passed, she was a criminal in every state. There was a bounty on her head. Her country hated her. I know all of this because there were those who wrote her story.
The furnace repairman is coming soon. I have a cup of hot tea beside me. Still, I’m feeling some kind of way about this country right now. I didn’t realize until writing about it, how stressors upon stressors all impact my motivation to write. It’s a feeling in the background. My mind keeps searching for a way out, an escape plan, an explanation. The disquiet resides like a presence. Yet there is no escaping when you live in a country that hates you.
So, maybe “hate” is too strong a word.
What word would you use if you were a federal employee in charge of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity now on leave?
How would you interpret the governor of your state removing all funding for your institution from the state budget?
or the President of your country (elected by a majority of the voters) attempting to revoke birthright citizenship?
I find these stirring as mental background music adding to the regular actors that distract me from writing. Unlike the normal stressors like lack of time and competing obligations, this one is different- less obvious but more insidious.
I can’t run away. I have to turn and face the wind on this one. I must write about it or it will suck me under.
I am hoping that those of you who are new to writing every day as a practice can use this time in history to strengthen that practice. The harder things get, the more important it will be that your voice is heard, and your experiences recorded. You can’t NOT write.
I think Mother Harriet would agree.
